Linux Lite Forums

Hardware - Support => Other => Topic started by: elconguero on November 16, 2014, 07:52:12 AM

I am writing about something I came across which worried me. Its to do with connecting a digital camera to Linux Lite. Once the USB cable was connected from the digital camera to Linux Lite the pictures in the camera are viewable on the monitor to look at. What I wasn’t aware of was that the pictures are automatically erased from the digital camera in the process. So once I finished watching the pictures I then disconnected the camera from the PC as I wanted to leave the pictures in the cameras memory. I was shocked to find that the pictures had been erased from the camera and as I had not saved the pictures that I looked on the monitor - these were lost as well. I have since learned that when connecting a camera to Linux LIte you must immediately save these onto your PC - if not you have lost all those memories. Is there a command that can be invoked to ensure that when a camera is connected that the pictures are not erased from the camera? Or that it asks if you want to transfer the pictures to the PC?

I'm not sure how you managed to erase the files from your camera. I have connected both my smart phone and digital camera to Linux Lite and viewed the images with 'Image Viewer' without any problems. The only way to delete them from disc is the erase option in the menu bar. I'd be interested to know where you got the information that LL automatically erases viewed images and how you viewed them.

If they have indeed been erased from you camera and they are important then I would suggest immediately do not save anything else to your camera card or edit it in any way until you have run some recovery software.

I have never had to recover files like this with Linux but here is a tool for Linux that might help:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec#How_PhotoRec_works

If it's not heresy here and you have access to a Windows machine there are also many recovery tools available, for example:

Cameras usually appear as another flash drive when they are connected. Perhaps it dumping pix when it's connected is just a feature of that particular camera. I lost my Coolpix's cable ages ago, so I can't test that feature. I just look work with my pix from the storage card.

Since this happened on a Linux box (ext4 partition), Recuva won't help in this instance - you'd need a Linux-based undelete utility. Note to self: Find a Linux undelete utility BEFORE I need one...